The Long Wait for Tomorrow (24 page)

Patrick looked over and saw Jenna matching them step for step.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Kelly turned to Patrick, and Patrick gave him the OK.

“We’re going to get that goddamn memory card back.”

n hour and a half after leaving Charlotte, Jenna came to a stop in front of the mailbox. Patrick and Kelly were out in an instant, doors closed as the car pulled away, heading west along the dark, empty stretch of country road. Crouched low, they stole down the driveway. As they kept close to the left side, the surrounding trees gave perfect cover, shielding them from the whitewash of a solitary lamppost just twenty yards down the street.

It was hardly the residential cluster of Verona’s inner sanctum. Out there, large patches of forest and private fields kept neighbors well out of each other’s business. The only stores in the area were gas stations. There were no sidewalks and, consequently, no pedestrians. And as a result, any and all suspicious activity fell under a very simple principle: if it was an activity, it was suspicious.

The driveway sloped down, widened, at which point Patrick and Kelly followed the line of trees around to the dark side of the house. First-and second-story windows bare like slates of marble.

“So far, so good,” Kelly whispered.

The front-yard lights came to life, sent light sprawling over them.

Kelly grabbed Patrick’s shoulder, yanked him back into the trees. He fell flat on his stomach, head buried between his arms. Dried leaves and pine needles poked at him. Breathing in the smell of dried forest bed and discarded bark, heart drumming in some dangerous time signature.

“Patrick …”

Raising his eyes, Patrick peered beyond the tree line.

A raccoon was scuttling across the flower beds, a stealthy blob on a brightly lit stage.

“Tripped off the motion sensors,” Kelly whispered. “Once it leaves, we’ll wait for the lights to turn off, head to the back. You’re sure we can get to his room from there?”

Patrick nodded.

“You still got the crowbar?”

“Yes.”

“Hang on to it, I don’t want to be searching for shit in the dark.”

“OK.”

“You sure you still want to do this?”

“Shut up, already.”

Without moving, they waited for the raccoon to leave.

Then for the lights to go.

Once their eyes had readjusted to the dark, Kelly led the way to the back. A couple of swift steps brought them to the base of a network of twisting ivy, weaving its way up the house along cross sections of cedar lattice.

Patrick pointed toward the far-right window jutting out over the roof. “That’s Cody’s room …” He then pointed to the
window directly above and to the left. “That’s Redwood’s office.”

“So we go in through there,” Kelly concluded.

Patrick nodded.

Kelly didn’t stand on ceremony. Securing his foot into the lattice, he hoisted himself up. In a matter of seconds, he had already scaled his way up to the roof. He waved down with an all clear.

Patrick glanced around, wary of any witness hiding in the dark. Nothing out there but the sound of crickets and the forest settling. He pulled the gloves Kelly had given him tight around his hands. Sheathing the crowbar between his belt and Armani pants, he reached up and hooked onto the wooden frame. Closed his eyes, visualizing the next step. Preparing himself, because he knew that would be the one that made it all real.

After this, no more kidding yourself
, his angels cautioned.
This is actually happening.

To his surprise, the thought had a calming effect. He tightened his grip and dug his toe in, lifting off as though he’d spent every morning for the past four years doing pull-ups. The crowbar tapped against his foot with every new foothold, flat ivy leaves brushing against his teeth. By the time he reached the top and took hold of Kelly’s outstretched arm, Patrick’s body was oversaturated with joyous adrenaline.

“Got you smiling now,” Kelly chuckled as Patrick came to rest on the shingles. “How about that?”

They took a moment to enjoy the end of phase one. With
the woods surrounding them in quiet serenity, the two of them sat and basked in the glow of stars and a rising half-moon.

Patrick gave Kelly a pat on the back. “Let’s do this.”

“Right on.”

Inching up to the window, Kelly fastened his arms around the screen. He glanced back and let out a breath. “This is going to be noisier than you might like,” he warned before closing his eyes and ripping the screen from its home. It ended up taking two brutal yanks, each one accompanied by the pained creaking of metal. Then two harsh pops as the bolts tore free.

They paused, expecting a SWAT team to come sliding down a swath of suspended cables, semiautomatic rifles blazing.

A car sped past on Erwin Road, an oblivious metal trilobite.

Kelly laid the screen down beside him, reached back with his hand.

Patrick handed him the crowbar.

Positioning himself for a better angle, he rested the round end of the crowbar against one of the rectangular panes. Gave a few practice taps.

“What are you
doing
?” Patrick whispered.

“Going to break the glass. Unlock it from inside.”

“I thought you were going to
pry
it open.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Kelly tapped a few more times. “You can’t pry open a window, that’s doors you’re thinking of.”

“Then why not the back door?”

“You said there was an alarm system,” Kelly whispered. “Whole downstairs is covered with motion sensors, wired to the front and back doors.”

“How do we know this window
isn’t
?”

“Well,
is
it?”

“I don’t
know!”

With a quick thrust, Kelly sent the crowbar through the window. It didn’t shatter as much as crack apart. Large, geometrically confused pieces of glass came toppling down, no louder than the removal of the screen, but there was something about glass.

“Guess not,” Kelly concluded, snaking his arm through the gaping hole.

Once inside, Patrick led them through the dark. He’d been in Cody’s house on numerous occasions. Always with Kelly, of course, and Patrick had to wonder how much of this was coming back to the would-be time traveler.

Things versus events
, Patrick’s angels recalled.

The hallway was lit by the sickly orange glow of a scented plug-in. Now that they were safely inside, their concerns ebbed. Tiptoeing with a bit more abandon, they made it down to Cody’s room. The door was ajar, and they opened it wide as they could to maximize the hallway light.

Patrick surveyed the room. It wasn’t unlike Kelly’s; hip-hop posters, clothes scattered about, dresser drawers agape, bookcases home to awards for athletic excellence. Imagining himself as a detective, he slowly approached Cody’s desk. With an alert yet relaxed gaze, he took in every detail before moving in. Lowering into a crouch to get a different angle on things. He turned on a mental sound track, a few tunes from the album
Clifford
Brown with Strings.
Nothing more than a collection of standards, but the sound of Clifford’s trumpet, set against the backdrop of a studio full of strings, always had that kind of 1930s detective feel to it….

“Got it,” Kelly announced.

Patrick found him sitting on the box spring of Cody’s bed. The mattress had been lifted at a corner, alligator jaw resting against Kelly’s back. A large ziplock bag dangled from his hand.

Way to shine, Dick Tracy
, Patrick’s angels chided.
Wouldn’t sell the farm if I were you.

He approached the bag and peered through the plastic. There was the memory card, along with what appeared to be oblong pills of undetermined color. Patrick smiled, glanced up. “How did you know?”

“Remembered his secret stash,” Kelly said, now holding up an issue of
Barely Legal
, in one of many skinny bags tucked farther down the mattress. “Thank you, Larry Flynt.”

“So, one more time …,” Patrick said, feeling more at home now that they had found what they were looking for. “Why did we bring the crowbar?”

“Just in case I was wrong and we had to do a little lock busting. Better safe—”

“—than sorry,” Patrick finished. “There, we’re
both
time travelers now.”

“We should hang out more.”

“What are these?” Patrick asked, pointing to the pills. “There’s a lot of them.”

Kelly closed his eyes tight, sorting through his limited memory. “Didn’t Jenna say something about Cody acting a little more psychotic than usual?”

“Yeah?”

“Though that’s a common misconception,” Kelly muttered to himself. “Still, if Cody’s predisposed to that kind of aggression—”

“You’ve seen the guy when he loses,” Patrick interrupted. “I doubt there’s an object on this planet he hasn’t punched. What’s the point?”

“Steroids.”

“No.”

“Cody’s a little monstrous for a sophomore, don’t you think?”

“Still …”

“Got any better suggestions?”

“Maybe they’re just some kind of prescription—”

“Sure …” Kelly grabbed the rest of the porn mags, fanned them out like dirty playing cards. “And I suppose these are all past issues of the
Wall Street Journal.
They’re here because they’re contraband. Take my word for it, Cody’s been juicing.”

“Well, maybe Wellspring’s got a shot at winning state after all. We’ve got the card. Let’s get out of here before some squirrel calls the police.”

“We’re taking all of it,” Kelly said decisively, folding up the bag and shoving it into Patrick’s pocket. “If Cody finds just his card missing, he’s going to know it was us.”

“We take the whole bag, he’s going to know anyway.”

Kelly walked out into the hallway with Patrick in tow.
“Yeah, but now he can’t finger us. Because he knows that if he does, we can just say, yeah … we came for a plastic memory card that happened to be in this bag filled with a controlled substance. We all go to jail together.”

They made it back to Redwood’s office, at which point Patrick stopped Kelly in his tracks. “I don’t want to go to jail,
period
.”

“For over forty years, the U.S. didn’t want to disappear in a radioactive mushroom cloud,” Kelly told him, shrugging. “They called it the cold war, and if mutually assured self-destruction worked for an entire planet, it’ll probably work for us.”

“The U.S.
still
doesn’t want to disappear in a radioactive—”

“Then if I were you, I’d get the hell out of this country before the year 2012, my friend.”

Even in the dark, Patrick knew his horrified expression must have made an impact.

“Just kidding,” Kelly said grimly. “Looks like you do believe in time travel, after all.”

“Asshole.” Patrick exhaled, hand clutching at his chest. “Can we go now?”

“Hell yes.”

The pair of them snuck back out the window, mindful of the broken glass.

Out onto the roof, where they shimmied back down their white lattice ladder.

Cutting through the forest, they came to the edge of Erwin Road, a strategically dark stretch between widespread streetlights. They kept to the trees, waiting. After a few minutes, they heard
the sound of Kelly’s car slowing to a stop across the road. Not another car in sight, and that was the icing on the cake. They sprinted across the road, and jumped into the convertible.

“Where to?” Jenna asked, checking to make sure all limbs were tucked safely into the vehicle.

“I, for one, could use a drink,” Kelly said.

“Maybe a game of nine-ball?” Patrick added.

There was a momentary pause, and even the moon blushed with a fulfilled glow.

“I think I know a place where we can get both,” Jenna said, switching on the headlights and hitting the gas.